Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-03-03

be the fruit of painful study. If practice
did not make perfect, nor habit econo-
mlze the expense of nervous and muscu-
lar energy, he would therefore be in
sorry plight. The next result is that
habit diminishes the conscious attention.
with which our actions are performed.
When we are learning to walk, to ride, to
swim, skate, fence, write, play or sing,
we interrupt ourselves at every step by
unnecessary movements and false notes.
When we are proficients, on the contrary,
the results not only follow with the very
minimum of muscular action requisite to
bring them forth, they also follow from
single instantaneous "cue." The marks
man sees the bird, and before he knows
it he has aimed and shot A CLEAN IN
his adversary's eye, momentary pressure
from his rapier, and the fencer finds that
he has instantly made the right parry and
return. And not only is it the right
thing at the right time that we thus in
voluntarily do, but the wrong thing al
so, if it be an habitual thing. Who is
there that has never wound up his watch
on taking off his waistcoat in the day
time, Or taken his latch key out on ar
irving at the doorstep of a friend.
This brings us by very natural transit
law of habit. They are numerous and
momentous. "Habit a second nature?
Habit is ten times nature:' the Duke of
Wellington is said to have exclaimed;
and the degree to which this is true no
one can probably appreciate as we'll as
one who is veteran soldier himself. The
daily drill and the years of discipline end
by fashioning a man completely over
RI nf
his conduct.
Already at the age of 25 you see the
professional mannerism settling down on
the yonng commercial traveller, on the
doctor, on the young minister, on the
young counselor at law. You see the lit
tie lines of cleavage running through the
character, the tricks of thought, the pre-
judices, the ways of the shop in a word,
from which the man can by and by no
more escape than his coat sleeve can sud-
denly fall into new set of folds. On the
whole, it is best he should not escape. It
is well for the world that in most of US
by the age of about 80, the character has
set like plaster, and will never soften
again.
If the period between 20 and 80 is the
critical one in the formation of intellec-
tual and professional habits, the period
below twenty is more important still for
the fixing of personal habits, properly
so called, such as vOcalization and pro-
nunciation, gesture, motion and address,
Hardly ever is language learned after
20 spoken without foreign accent;
hardly ever can a youth transferred to
the society of his betters unlearn the
nasality and other vices of speech bred
In him by the associations Of his grow
ing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no mat
ter how much mouey there be in his
pocket, can he even learn to dress like
gentleman born. The merchants offer
their wares as eagerly to him as to the
veriest ''swell," but he simply can't buy
the right things. An invisible law as
strong as gravitation, keeps him within
his orbit, arrayed this year as ne was the
last; and how his aristocratic acquaint-
ances contrive to get the things they
wear will be for him mystery to his
dying day.
The great thing, then, in all education.
is to take automatic and habitual, as ear
ly as possible, us many useful actions as
we can, and to guard against the growing
into ways that are likely to be disadvan- |
tageous to us, as wo should guard against
the plague. The more Of the details of
our daily life we can hand over to the in
fallible and effortless custody of autonat-
ism, the more our higher powers Of mind
will be set free from their own proper
work. There is no more miserable hu-
man being than one in whom nothing is
habitual but indicision, and for whom the
lighting of every cigar, the drinking Of
every cup, the time of rising and going
to bed every day, and the beginning of
every bit of work are subjects of express
volitional elaboration. He who every day
makes fresh resolve is like one who, arriv-
ing at the edge of the ditch he is to leap,
forever stops and returns for fresh run.
Without unbroken advance there is no
such thing as accumulation Of the ethi-
sal forces possible, and to make this pos
sible, and to exercise us and habituate US
in it is the Sovereign blessing of regular
work.